Tom Nees and The Mission Journal

BY STAN INGERSOL

Elton Trueblood contended that authentic Christian witness in the modern world requires three elements be brought into harmony: piety, social concern, and the life of the mind. All three converged in the ministry of Tom Nees.

An inveterate reader with broad interests, Nees graduated from Nazarene Theological Seminary in 1962. He began writing for Herald of Holiness during his first pastorate.

Those early articles clarified Nazarene beliefs, morals, and practices, and bore such titles as “Can a Man be Perfect?” “Moving Beyond Legalism,” and “On Being Open to Sanctification.”1 They reflected the central role of evangelism.

Eventually, themes of Christian social responsibility emerged. In 1974 he wrote: “The witness of our lives includes everything we do and say as a revelation of what we believe and hold to be true.” Good works cannot justify sinners, but they do glorify God, allowing “authentic evangelism” to proceed.2

In 1973, Nees was pastor of First Church of the Nazarene in Washington, D. C., and wrote about the National Prayer Breakfast where President Nixon spoke. He then described some of the Christian networks operating inside America’s capitol city.3

Two years later, a prayer group was organized that evolved into a home mission church in Washington, D.C.’s “riot corridor.” Called the Community of Hope, its ministries grew to include “a health clinic, legal counseling, emergency food and clothing assistance, housing rehabilitation, a shelter for the homeless, tutoring, and a variety of other neighborhood projects.” Themes of urban ministry, care for the poor, and racial reconciliation had moved to the forefront of Nees’ witness.4

Nees was acquainted with Gordon Cosby, founder of Church of the Savior, an innovative congregation. He was also reading renewal literature, and he absorbed Mildred Wynkoop’s small but interesting book, John Wesley: Christian Revolutionary (1970), which examined early Methodist concern for the material needs of others.

Nees entered a Doctor of Ministry degree program at Wesley Theological Seminary and submitted his thesis on “The Holiness Social Ethic and Nazarene Urban Ministry.” In it, he undertook a comprehensive study of urban and social ministry precedents in early Methodism and in the early Church of the Nazarene. He applied theological insights from Methodist and Nazarene founders to his practical approaches to inner-city ministry in Washington.

Community of Hope launched a monthly paper edited by Estelle Ducharme. Nees noted that the new publication was “a part of our call to urban ministry... we want to open the life of our community to others, to encourage interest, participation and support as we follow this call to the people for whom the inner city of Washington is home.”5

Nees initially contributed two columns to each issue of The Mission Journal. “Journal Entries” documented personal day-to-day observations of urban ministry, while he shared insights about Wesley and Bresee in “Reviewing Our Heritage.”

His 1977 district board of home missions paper, “Caring for the City,” was excerpted in The Mission Journal. He noted that Community of Hope medical and housing rehabilitation ministries stood financially on their own and constituted “expression[s] of our mission to people in need.” He added: “Holistic ministry embraces the Gospel with concern and compassion for all the needs of people... Evangelism which appears to be concerned with people while ignoring their physical and social need is evangelism without the Gospel.”6

In the book Compassion Evangelism (1996), Nees rehearsed the well-known “schism” between evangelism and social ministry in the early twentieth century, driven as it was by the two polarizing tendencies of fundamentalism and modernism. Nees pled for joining evangelism and compassion, noting that the concepts, “when joined together, bring us close to the essential ministry and message of Jesus. It’s not that compassionate evangelism is a new technique...nor is compassion a means to an end. Christian compassion is a sign of the Kingdom, never to be reduced to an act or a program.”7

Nees went on to hold a series of important offices in the Church of the Nazarene, but his career always reflected the essential character shaped by his Community of Hope days. He said this in an interview in 1977:

“I’ve come to see Jesus as a human being in touch with people at a level of need that I’d never understood in the past. We place a great deal of emphasis in [Community of Hope] on what we call mission groups. The mission group has a journey inward and a journey outward. Our journey outward is our mission. Our journey inward is the development of this relationship with Christ. And we know for ourselves that the journey inward is really more important than the journey outward, for if we make contact with Christ, he will lead us on to ministry and mission.”8

Dr. Stan Ingersol, Ph.D., is a church historian and former manager of the Nazarene Archives.

1 Herald of Holiness (Sept. 11, 1963): 7-8; (Oct. 13, 1971): 12-13; and (Mar 28, 1973): 10-11;

2 Ibid (Sept 25, 1974): 6-7.

3 Ibid (April 25, 1973): 10-11.

4 Ibid (Dec. 1, 1982): 6-7.

5 Tom Nees, “In This Issue,” The Mission Journal (Feb. 1976): 1.

6 Tom Nees, “The Meaning of Holistic Ministry, The Mission Journal (Nov. 1977): 5.

7 Thomas G. Nees, Compassion Evangelism: Meeting Human Needs (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1996): 26.

8 “The Epworth Pulpit Interviews Tom Nees,” Epworth Pulpit (Nov. 1977): 11.